


Pendulum

by notfromcold



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dissociation, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Trauma, but being supportive of each other, chapter two gets into specific descriptions of canon violence, feeling and processing emotions in different ways, immediately post movie, soft soft soft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:27:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26098636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notfromcold/pseuds/notfromcold
Summary: They all react in different ways. They support each other through it.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 6
Kudos: 120





	1. Joe

Joe cried himself to sleep after. He was too tired to weep but also too tired stem the tide of grief. So he let the tears leak out of his eyes, almost soundless.

Of course Nicky noticed. Nicky noticed even before Joe's tears had a chance to soak into the back of his shirt; at his neck where Joe had pressed his face.

Joe sobbed when Nicky turned in his arms to rub his back and stroke his hair. Nicky hummed a little, quietly, tunelessly, maybe a lullaby and maybe just a reminder that Joe was not alone with his grief. Nicky didn't try to shush him. He was just there - just present. And eventually, between one shuddering breath and the next, Joe passed from crying into sleep.

Joe woke in the morning with a splitting headache. Regardless, he felt lighter. His face was pressed into Nicky's chest and Nicky was asleep with his arm looped around Joe's back. Nicky woke, smiling, when Joe moved. The light slanting through the blinds striped his face and Joe was put in mind suddenly, ridiculously, of a tiger. He ran his fingers across Nicky's face, following the path of the light.

"Feeling better?" Nicky asked.

"Yeah. I bet I look like hell."

"Never. Not ever."

Joe sighed. "How are you, love?"

Nicky blinked. "I don't know. I needed to hold you last night. I needed to take care of you. But I don't -" he cut himself off, gesturing, sketching the shape of something enormous, " - I don't feel it yet. Any of it. I feel numb but also," he laughed, "also like it's lying in wait."

Joe stroked his thumb along a tiger stripe of light. "I'll be here when it finds you."

Joe and Nicky had read, together, a book that described the concept of a "time traveling emotion." Sometimes, when you couldn't feel it in the moment, it would find you later.

Joe hadn't felt it at Merrick's labs, not fully, not the pure, sharp heartbreak of it, but it found him in his bed and set him sobbing.

Nicky hadn't felt any of it yet.

This was often the way with them. Sometimes the emotion had to travel farther to get to Nicky. But if it came for Joe first, at least Joe would be healed enough to care for Nicky when it found him. It was a pendulum swing. A rhythm like the sea.

All you could do was ride it out.

Nicky leaned into Joe's hand.


	2. Together and Apart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens when forgiveness takes longer than you have?  
> CW: for brief description of Nicky's feelings about the manner in which Keane killed him. Could be seen as implied/referenced sexual assault.

"I wish him good things," Joe was saying. "I want ..." He didnt finish the sentence. His glass was sweating in the stale air of the bar, condensation beading on his hands, his rings.

Nicky remembered Joe's hands on his arms, grounding him as he gasped awake, head pounding, violation tasting metal on his tongue. Joe was his lighthouse, his beacon. Joe wished Booker good things. 

Nicky closed his eyes and thought, closed his eyes and tried to feel anything other than numb. It didn't work.

Sleeping under the same roof as Booker had made him feel crazy, as though maybe he'd just dreamed the lab.

But then Joe had cried himself to sleep in Nicky's arms. Joe had cried until his body collapsed from exhaustion, while Booker slept (?) on the opposite side of the wall. 

Maybe Booker had cried himself to sleep, too. That thought hurt Nicky's heart but the idea of comforting him made his stomach swoop dangerously and his head feel so light it could float away. 

Nicky realized that maybe he was breathing a bit too fast.

Nile got up and went outside. 

Joe reached across the table and squeezed his hand, palms still wet from his glass. Nicky was going to cry. He was going to cry in this bar. Or possibly he was going to pass out. He put his head on Joe's shoulder instead. Joe learned into him, squeezing his hand again.

"I want to forgive him," Joe said, "but I can't right now. I want to someday. I wish there was someone who could forgive him for me, who could hear all he did and still love him. More than that - because I still love him - who could hear all that and choose to spend their days with him. Because someone could choose that. Many people could choose that. But I can't. I can't right now."

Nicky closed his eyes again and nodded. "It made me feel not real. Sleeping in the house with him made me feel not real."

Andy met Joe's eyes and then Nicky's. "100 years. In 100 years you will meet him here."

"Andy -" Nicky started.

"No." Andy seemed certain. "100 years. I can't forgive him yet either. It is no one's fault I do not have the time it would take." Then she checked herself. "Will 100 years be enough time?"

God, Nicky wanted it to be. Joe was looking at him. "I hope so," he said.


	3. Downswing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere safe.  
> CW: Joe throws up. NIcky has a nightmare and that causes Joe to have a flashback. Some discussion of Andy's injuries.

They walked back to the car, leaving Booker on the beach.

When they were in sight of it, in sight of the goal of driving away, Joe dropped to his knees on the sidewalk and threw up in a planter of red begonias.

Nicky dropped beside Joe, sitting on his heels, speaking in a language Nile didn't know.

Andy moved to shield them from view with her body and Nile followed instinctively, as instinctively as she had taken those bullets for Andy.

Then Joe was getting to his feet shakily, wiping his mouth, trying to smile. "Sorry. That was gross."

"You're good," Nile told him.

Nicky smiled at her, a sweet, grateful thing. Andy looked pleased. "Come on," was all she said, though, "let's go find Copley and see if we need to threaten him."

Later. After. Dinner was a blur. Then after.

The hotel room was a hotel room. It had all the things you'd expect in a hotel room other than privacy. There was no privacy because there was only one hotel room and four adults.

It was fine, as far as Nile was concerned. She supposed she'd be sharing an uncomfortable bed with Andy and they'd all take a turn in the bathroom. Like highschool debate trips. Her team had gone to Portland. It had rained a lot and they had not won, but they'd laughed and joked and bonded in the adrenaline of competition. She'd been proud of them. She was proud of this team, too.

Nicky changed Andy's bandages and encouraged her to take the antibiotics Copley had scrounged up and some Advil. Then they took turns in the bathroom and turned out the light. At least an hour passed before Nicky started screaming.

He sounded as though he was being tortured. Which, well... Nile turned on the lamp next to the bed. Nicky had quieted and was panting, hands braced on his knees and head hanging down, struggling for air. Joe was staring wide eyed and lost, as though reliving horrors.

"Excuse me," Nicky said, his head jerking up. Then he ran into the bathroom. 

Andy sighed, getting out of bed to sit next to Joe. "Joe? Do you know where you are?"

"Shitty hotel," Joe muttered.

"Yep. Correct. Can you tell me some things you see in the room?"

"Cheap curtains, microwave, bedspread that smells like cigarettes."

"Good. Glad you're with me. Sit tight while I check on Nicky." Andy got up, speaking quietly next to the bathroom door, then joining Nicky when he opened it. She walked him out a minute later with her arm around his shoulder.

"Andy, I'm sorry," Nicky was saying, "You're hurt. We are supposed to be taking care of you."

"Lie down, Nicky," Andy said, positioning herself next to Joe and holding out her arms. Nicky sighed and laid down with his head on Joe's chest, the two of them curling together within the circle of Andy's left arm. "I like knowing you're safe," Andy told them.

Nile was readying herself to turn off the light and fall back to sleep in her empty bed when Andy held out the arm that was not full of Joe and Nicky. "Nile?" she asked. 

"I don't ..." Nile started, because what was she supposed to do here? Her life had been upended and she wasn't in a position to comfort torture survivors she barely knew.

"You've had a trying couple days, is all," Andy said. And - fuck it. Joining a cuddle pile with people she'd spent only 48 hours with wasn't the weirdest thing she'd done that week. Nile got out of bed, turned off the light, and folded herself into the warmth of Andy's arm.


	4. Nicky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hotel from Nicky's point of view.
> 
> CW: Nicky has a nightmare he can't remember followed by a panic attack he definitely can. Mentions of canon violence including the situation with Keane.

Nicky didn't remember the dreams but he remembered screaming himself awake. He remembered scrambling to sit up, then nearly doubling over with his elbows braced on his knees and his head hanging between. Tripod stance, he thought dispassionately, a sign someone was having trouble breathing. Maybe a panic attack. In his case, definitely a panic attack.

The light was on now. Everyone was looking at him. Joe seemed frozen in place. Nile looked frightened. Andy looked tired.

The weight of their gazes was the final straw. Nicky managed to say "excuse me" before he ran into the bathroom.

Shakily, he sat on the floor and hugged himself, rocking slightly. Too many emotions. Too many memories he couldn't quite remember. The feeling of the gun in his mouth. Fuck. Fuck. He was going to pass out. Breathe.

He lay down on his side on the linoleum just in case. No point in further head injuries.

Voices from the room beyond the door. Hopefully Andy was comforting Joe. Nicky sat up, less afraid of fainting with the voices to latch on to. He breathed. He brushed his fingers against the oddly textured linoleum. He wrestled with the overwhelming urge to sob.

Andy's voice at the door. "Nicky, can I come in? Can you let me in?"

"Yeah."

It took an effort of will to stand and open the door.

"Nicky, look at me. Good. Come on." Andy opened her arms and Nicky tucked himself into her warmth, careful of her injured side. "Can we leave the bathroom now, Nicky?"

Nicky nodded and let Andy lead him out. Guilt swamped him but Andy wouldn't have it, lying down at Joe's side, Joe who was looking at him with sad, gentle understanding, no longer frozen and scared.

Nicky was so tired. He curled into Joe within Andy's protective embrace and vaguely registered Nile joining them. Joe was stroking his hair, humming gently as Nicky had hummed for him that first night. Tears pricked at Nicky's eyes but he fell asleep before too many could fall. 

He was so exhausted that his sleep was dreamless.

**Author's Note:**

> The time travelling emotion is described by Adrienne Maree Brown in her book Emergent Strategy, which I loved even if I didn't agree with her in all things. Therefore Joe and Nicky loved it too.
> 
> This is the song Nicky is humming in chapter 1: https://open.spotify.com/track/0UWPywZd9p8nbReKT9XNSM?si=pAKAJ3-MRV2vH4JlYUiE5g


End file.
